Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times

New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme

Albrecht Classen

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9783110205749
• eBook ISBN: 9783110209402
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: Literature

Sexuality is one of the most influential factors in human life. The responses to and reflections upon the manifestations of sexuality provide fascinating insights into fundamental aspects of medieval and early-modern culture. This interdisciplinary volume with articles written by social historians, literary historians, musicologists, art historians, and historians of religion and mental-ity demonstrates how fruitful collaborative efforts can be in the exploration of essential features of human society. Practically every aspect of culture both in the Middle Ages and the early modern age was influenced and determined by sexuality, which hardly ever surfaces simply characterized by prurient interests. The treatment of sexuality in literature, chronicles, music, art, legal documents, and in scientific texts illuminates central concerns, anxieties, tensions, needs, fears, and problems in human society throughout times.

Table of contents

• Frontmatter
• Table of Contents
• The Cultural Significance of Sexuality in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Beyond. A Secret Continuous Undercurrent or a Dominant Phenomenon of the Premodern World? Or: The Irrepressibility of Sex Yesterday and Today
• Naked Men in Medieval German Literature and Art Anthropological, Cultural Historical, and Mental Historical Investigations
• The Exposed Body and the Gendered Blemmye: Reading the Wonders of the East
• Lust ohne Liebe Roswitha von Gandersheim und geschlechtsspezifische Strafen für sündigen Sex
• Sex and Fertility in Marie de France’s Lais
• “Good Lovin’”: The Language of Erotic Desire and Fulfillment in Gottfried’s Tristan
• The Limits of Reading Innuendo in Medieval Literature
• Singing Desire: Musical Innuendo in Troubadour and Trouvère Song
• A Vision of “Sexuality,” “Obscenity” or “Nudity”? Regional Differences in the Images of Corbels
• Heloise, Monastic Temptation, and Memoria: Rethinking Autobiography, Sexual Experience, and Ethics
• Gruppensex im Untergrund: Chaotische Ketzer und kirchliche Keuschheit im Mittelalter
• Desire, Parody, and Sexual Mores in the Ending of Hue de Rotelande’s Ipomedon: An Invitation Through the Looking Glass
• Feminine Sexuality and the Crusades Clerical Opposition to Women as a Strategy for Crusading Success
• The Sexual Lives of Medieval Norman Clerics: A New Perspective on Clerical Sexuality
• Feminine Sexuality in the Lancelot Grail Cycle
• Sausages, Nuts, and Eggs: Food Imagery, the Body, and Sexuality in the Old French Fabliaux
• Sex and the Sacraments in Tristan de Nanteuil
• Inseminating Ruth in the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book: A Romance of the Crusades
• The Rape of Men and other “Lessons” about Sex in the Libro de buen amor
• Oral Sex in Oswald von Wolkenstein’s “Es seusst dort her von orient” (Kl. 20)
• Intersecting the Ideal and the Real, Chivalry and Rape, Respect and Dishonor: The Problematics of Sexual Relationships in Troilus and Criseyde, Athelston, and Sir Tristrem
• Caught in the Act: Malory’s “Sir Gareth” and the Construction of Sexual Performance
• Sexual Desire and Pornography: Literary Imagination in a Satirical Context. Gender Conflict, Sexual Identity, and Misogyny in “Das Nonnenturnier”
• The Prosecution of Sex in Late Medieval Troyes
• Das Freudenhaus im Mittelalter: In der stat was gesessen / ain unrainer pulian . . .
• Prescription, Passion, and Patronage in Early Modern Spain: Legitimizing Illicit Love at Santo Domingo de Silos “el Antiguo,” Toledo
• Fertilizing the French Vernacular: Procreation, Warfare, and Authorship in Jean de Meun, Jean Lemaire de Belges, and Rabelais
• Deadly Sex and Sexy Death in Early Modern French Literature
• From the Clitoris to the Breast: The Eclipse of the Female Libido in Early Modern Art, Literature, and Philosophy
• Backmatter